Take A Psychedelic Journey Inside A Modified Guinea Pig In This CGI Music Video

The great thing about music videos is, they don't need to make a whole lot of sense. You want the narrative to follow a SIM card as it flies through the intestines of a mechanically-altered guinea pig? Go right ahead. That's what's happening in the video for electronic producer My Panda Shall Fly's new track "SSIM" from his No Secrets EP, released on Creaked Records.

The animated trip was created by "CGI artist" Clifford Sage using game engine Unity, and occurs in a platform-style environment which follows a SIM card through the layered 3D bio-world that lurks within this modified rodent. "The track's constant pace reminded me of the journeys that games like Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee took us on with its isometric, layered designs and 3D cut-scenes," explains Sage.

The stomach

Inspired by MPSF's driving beats and loops, Sage decided to depict the inside of this supped-up guinea pig as a luminescent world full of abstracted rotating gears, mechanical organs, and glowing bells tempered by the fleshy textures and effervescent colors that constitute its altered biology.

Modelling the mouth

"This music video was always going to have some kind of mechanical endeavour and I'm a big fan of H.R Giger's bio-mechanic envisions. But making a music video I think is often a chance to depict or translate something that's completely made up in a group or your own head as a response to the music, and also raises the question of how someone else might depict it in a totally different way," Sage said.

This isn't the end for this music video either, just the first iteration. There are plans to make the video an interactive, browser-based game that people can play and explore. Users will be able to experience the track's vibe in an even more immersive way. And if a browser isn't immersive enough for you, you'll also be able to play it using an Oculus Rift headset, since the environment was built in Unity.

Technology has enhanced music videos in innumerable ways—be it through special effects, scenes shot via drone, or interactive multimedia releases that allow us to explore a video through several avenues. When MTV was in full swing in the 80s, who would have thought that the future of music videos would include the opportunity to use an augmented reality headset to explore the insides of a mechanical rodent? How far we've come.